I’m currently working my way through Mike Rother’s book Toyota Kata. A formal review will follow in the future as I’m approximately half done but I can already say there are many great insights into TPS. However, one of the insights has sparked up an old fire that I always seem to struggle with understanding as I have never been employed by Toyota.

Mike talks about how a Toyota assembly plant was staffed to handle about 1,000 andon calls per shift and they became very concerned when the calls dropped to 700 per shift. Toyota found that this could only mean two things: Continue reading →

I refuse to give up on something after one try so here is my second attempt at lean haiku. If you missed my first try here it is with a brief explanation of my motivation. This one is called a raised hand.